Following Smut Manchester I decided to go to church Sunday morning. Not out of guilt but out of need. I love St Agnes‘s and my weekly visit is a top up for me. I was thinking twice about it on the 1 1/2 hour long journey in. It’s a long way and I was thinking of all the extra time I could have had in bed.
However, when I arrived I knew I’d made the right decision. The first thing that convinced me of that was the reading Clive asked me to do:
You are an offshoot of God, so, then, be it. With that hand of yours, you can wave to Me. With that hand, you can create miracles, for you are a miracle that I created on the Potter’s Wheel. Each one of My children is a miracle. How can you not know that? How can you pretend that you don’t know that? How can you pull the wool over your own eyes and plead ignorance?
Look for what you are and be it. This is not immodest. This is awareness. Take My awareness. Here, I give it to you. When your heart swells with love for Me, know that that selfsame love is for you to love yourself with and love everyone in the world with. Love thyself, and all the world blooms in sunlight.
Neal Donald Walsch
Even when I just read it over to myself before the service, I was moved. It was just what I needed to hear. Now, you may not be too surprised when I tell you that years and years of traditional church teaching has got me to a point where fairly regularly I doubt myself and my involvement in smut. Now, luckily God’s really patient and doesn’t tire of telling me to stop being a numpty and get on with being me. My talents are God given, all of them, and that includes the Smut.
And that was the thrust of Clive’s service. Accept your talents, be who you are without excuse and go for it. The church traditionally has put us down, made us second guess everything we’re doing. But actually, God wants us to shine. To go out there and be completely and utterly the way we are and to do so with gusto and thanks giving to God.
And then he told us to get stuffed. Nice, eh? Actually, it was brilliant. He was talking about old, much loved Teddy bears. The ones with the stuffing beat out of ’em. You can send teddys to the doll hospital to have them fixed and mended and sometimes we need to do that. We need to go to God and let him put back all that’s been knocked out of us by life. By the church looking down it’s nose, by people’s expectations and prejudices.
So go on, go out and get stuffed today. Let yourself be the full and true extent of you.
I’m convinced I’m called to be in this unique position with a foot in the church and a foot in the smut world.It’s not a comfortable position and I often feel like I might topple over but I know it’s important to be where I am, it’s important to be the complete and utter weirdo I am so I’m going to be me, thoroughly me and write with passion and gusto.
I’ll also keep on (with the help and support of Kev) and continue to organise smutty events to bring people together. Authors and readers who can find it hard to be completely themselves in real life. To give a day of being completely and utterly free to be their awesomely smutty selves.
